Lawrence Durrell Quotes

Music is only love looking for words.

You see, nothing matters except pleasure - which is the opposite of happiness, its tragic part, I expect.

I suppose the secret of his success is in his tremendous idleness which almost approaches the supernatural.

The steward, according to custom, had stopped all the clocks. This, in the language of Narouz, said, "Your stay with us is so brief, let us not be reminded of the flight of the hours. God made eternity. Let us escape from the despotism of time altogether." These ancient and hereditary politenesses filled Nessim with emotion.

I don’t believe one reads to escape reality. A person reads to confirm a reality he knows is there, but which he has not experienced.

People only see in us the contemptible skirt-fever which rules our actions but completely miss the beauty-hunger underlying it.

It is hard to fight with one's heart's desires; whatever it wishes to get, it purchases at the cost of the soul.

Art - the meaning of the pattern of our common actions in reality. The cloth-of-gold that hides behind the sackcloth of reality, forced out by the pain of human memory.

We should tackle reality in a slightly jokey way, otherwise we miss its point.

Art like life is an open secret.

we who have travelled much and loved much: we who have - I will not say suffered for we have always recognized through suffering our own self-sufficiency - only we appreciate the complexities of tenderness, and understand how narrowly love and friendship are related